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Do you work with jerks?

Guest post by: Sylvia Lafair

Article Overview: Did you ever wonder how much time is spent being annoyed (or annoying others) at work? A whopping 93 percent of workers report being negatively affected by an inability to deal with conflict on the job. They are told to "forget it", "deal with it on personal time" or "it's no big deal". Fortune 500 HR executives spend up to one-fifth of their time dealing with litigation activities. And a typical manager spends about 30 percent of a typical day dealing with disgruntled employees.

Do you work with jerks?

Did you ever wonder how much time is spent being annoyed (or annoying others) at work? A whopping 93 percent of workers report being negatively affected by an inability to deal with conflict on the job. They are told to "forget it", "deal with it on personal time" or "it's no big deal". Fortune 500 HR executives spend up to one-fifth of their time dealing with litigation activities. And a typical manager spends about 30 percent of a typical day dealing with disgruntled employees.

Here's one more bit of information; senior executives have been spending over half their time resolving "staff personality conflicts" about double the time spent during the 1980's.

These are statistics from "Don't Bring It to Work" (Jossey Bass) and the tension continuously seems to be getting worse, not better.

As far as costs to businesses go, higher health expenditures due to stress and time spent by managers dealing with conflict are only part of the picture. Think about the lost productivity, the limited creativity, and the lessons collaboration.

What is making us so stressed, disrespectful, and filled with anxiety at work? Here are some of the reasons:

1. Communications technology that depersonalizes relationships

2. Clashing styles and attitudes between the generations at work

3. Celebrity feuds, shoot-em-up video games that are mean spirited

4. Compulsive/obsessive behavior pattern repetition, has ramped up

5. Crude and lewd is now the acceptable norm

Each of these explanations holds some value. Yet I have a more cohesive and simpler interpretation: conflict runs rampant in the workplace because of our natural and universal tendency to bring our families to work with us.

No, I don't mean like when you are invited to go to your kid's school for "bring you parents to school day" or the reverse when you bring your child to your workplace. I mean when stress gets really high we all revert to the behavior patterns we learned in our original organization, the family, and that is what we bring to work.

Hey, stop a minute! Don't groan and think "Yee gods... not that old family stuff rearing its ugly head again". Knowing that this happens and learning what you can do about it is a major gift to you, your work colleagues, and also to your family.

There is an article in The Wall Street Journal that gives some ideas about how prevalent this behavior is. You can also find the Out Technique in "Don't Bring It to Work" (Jossey Bass) to help you Observe, Understand and Transform these annoying patterns that cause you or at least someone else at work to behave like a jerk and turn that jerky behavior around. Change is possible. It's about you, it's about me, and it's about time!

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Article Tags: conflict, disgruntled employees, jerks, job, litigation activities, personal time



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Re: Workaholism May Be Killing You - Hi Evan, Thanks for this post, I found the article very interesting and I do regularly work 12 hours or more but that is a total of my day job then Internet work when I get home, I must say that I agree with Michelle that I only feel that I work at my day job and my Internet work I really enjoy although some nights I go to bed absolutely shattered. There is an old saying that I think I may have used here before but it is something like “If you enjoy what you do then you never do a days work in your life”. If I ever get to the stage when I work form home full time then this would be the case for me because I love this work and would do it full time from home tomorrow if I could. regards, Mal.
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Working With Family - It depends on your relationship. I've worked with both of my sisters, my brother in law, and my girlfriend on different business ventures. They are smart, talented people who compliment the skill sets that I have. I also trust them and know that they work very hard. There are also a few members of our Mastermind Groups who are in business with their spouses and they love the opportunity to work and spend every day with each other. It doesn't always work out and you have to ask yourself if your personalities will work well together or not but I would recommend exploring the opportunity if you see a fit.


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